In many wireless communication networks, data is transmitted in packets or transport blocks. Next to the data to be transmitted, each transport block may contain bits for error detection coding (EDC) and forward error correction (FEC, also called channel coding). Error detection coding enables determining whether data has been received (and/or decoded) correctly, whereas forward error correction may facilitate correcting incorrectly received (and/or decoded) data. The encoding (and decoding) for error detection and forward error correction may be separated from each other and may allow independent treatment of the data. The term error coding may generally refer to and/or encompass error detection coding and/or forward error correction coding. Coding may generally refer to encoding and/or decoding, wherein decoding may in particular be performed on a receiver side and/or encoding may be performed on a transmitter side.
These codings may be used in a context with a HARQ-process (Hybrid Acknowledgement ReQuest), in which each transport block to be transmitted is assigned a HARQ-identifier. If a block is determined to be received (and/or decoded) correctly, the receiver (e.g., a terminal or user equipment) may reply with an acknowledgement signal (ACK) for the corresponding HARQ-identifier. If the block is determined not to be received (and/or decoded) correctly, the reply may signal non-acknowledgement (NACK). In this case, the transport block may be scheduled for resending using the same HARQ-identifier one or more times, until an ACK reply is received by the transmitting node.
Coding and decoding (both for error detection and FEC) both require like computational resources and occupy transmit resources like time and/or frequency resources when transmitting correspondingly encoded data or transport blocks. The thus produced overhead can be substantial.